In the real world, there's a good reason most coupons say "Limit: one per customer." In the digital world, EA found out just how costly neglecting such a limit can be. An offer meant to reward players with a single game instead allowed the entire Internet to unlock a good chunk of Origin's game library for free over the weekend.

It all started when EA sent out a coupon code good for any Origin game listed at $20 or less as a thank you to users who filled out an online survey. But instead of generating a unique code for each user, EA sent a generic, static code that could be used by anyone with an Origin account.

That might not have been so bad for EA, if users didn't quickly discover that that same code could be used multiple times by a single purchaser by simply playing around with log-in cookies (other workarounds had users enter the code from the Web store and Origin application at the same time, or create multiple accounts to use the coupon multiple times). Since Origin apparently didn't perform a server-side check to determine if a user had already redeemed the coupon, anyone could essentially use the code for free copies of any or all of the 180 or so Origin games listed for $20 or less, a list that included a lot of well-known titles.